It’s Time to Rein in Trump’s ‘Wars on Terror’

It’s Time to Rein in Trump’s ‘Wars on Terror’ | International Crisis Group

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**Op-Ed** / United States31 August 2026**1 minute**

It’s Time to Rein in Trump’s ‘Wars on Terror’

Originally published in Foreign Policy

Congress must act to address new and old executive abuses.

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!Brian Finucane

Brian Finucane

Senior Adviser, U.S.

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* United States
* Middle East & North Africa

Early September marks the anniversary of two “wars”—one an actual armed conflict with a real, albeit stretched and abused legal framework, the other a completely counterfeit enterprise from the get-go. Sept. 11 is of course the 25th anniversary of al Qaeda’s attacks upon the United States. And Sept. 2 is the first anniversary of the Trump administration’s lethal maritime strikes against vessels alleged to be smuggling drugs.

The Trump administration has cynically tried to cloak its boat strikes in the mantle of the post-9/11 “war on terror”—labeling the victims of these attacks as “narco-terrorists,” supposedly affiliated with “designated terrorist organizations,” which the administration characterizes as the “‘al Qaeda’ of our hemisphere.”

But the “war” framing for the boat bombings is a sham. Although President Donald Trump has continued to wage the post-9/11 forever war, his faux war of the maritime strikes represents a frightening new development that is distinct from what came before. For Congress, though, the solution remains the same: firm action to curtail executive military adventurism.

*The full article can be read on the**Foreign Policy**website.*

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